1. Technical Field
The disclosure relates generally to a method for determining switching of a sleep mode.
2. Description of Related Art
The world interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX) is a new generation of city wireless broadband network, which provides a sleep mode for the power management of the user end. When the user end wants to enter the sleep mode, a request message must first be transmitted to the server end to establish and activate a power saving class (PSC). The PSC is comprised of a group of connections having similar transmission requirement characteristics and one PSC may contain one or more connections. Upon receiving the request message, the server end returns a replay message to the user end, informing that whether or not the server end allows the user end to enter the sleep mode. If the server end allows, then the user end may switch to the sleep mode. Likewise, if the user end wants to leave the sleep mode, the switching is done through message transmission between both parties.
Because the user end entering the sleep mode needs not to operate as in the normal mode, the user end can temporarily shut off some unused hardware modules and reduce the waste of network resources thus effectively increasing the use time of the portable device and network performance. As a standard for WiMAX, IEEE 802.16e specifies only message transmission relating to the sleep mode. However, IEEE 802.16e does not clearly specify the conditions for entering and leaving the sleep mode, which provides a room for the manufacturers to define these conditions by themselves.
FIG. 1 illustrates a conventional determining method for switching of the sleep mode. Referring to FIG. 1, in the conventional determining method, it is first determined whether there is data to be transmitted in the basic queue (step S102). If there is data to be transmitted in the basic queue, then the user end enters a normal mode (step S104); if not, it is determined whether there is data to be transmitted in the primary queue (step S106). If there is data to be transmitted in the primary queue, the user end enters the normal mode (step S104); if not, then it is determined whether there is data to be transmitted in the data queue (step S108). If there is data to be transmitted in the data queue, then the user enters the normal mode (step S104); if not, the user end enters the sleep mode (step S110).
The conventional determining method is performed such that whether to enter the sleep mode is determined based on whether there is data to be transmitted in the queues. Thus, the user end can enter the sleep mode during the intervals when there is no data to be translated in the queue.